Henkel has announced plans to integrate its Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care businesses into 'one multi-category platform', which CEO Carsten Knobel says will enable the business to "optimise [its] portfolio even more consistently".
The combined business, which will be known as Henkel Consumer Brands, will boast around €10 billion in sales, the company added.
The group announced the move as it reported a 7.8% increase in group sales for the 2021 financial year, to €20.1 billion, while operating profit was up 4.2% to €2.7 billion.
Challenging Market Environment
“Overall, we delivered a good business performance in 2021 and consistently drove the implementation of our strategic agenda forward – despite a very challenging market environment with unprecedented disruptions in global supply chains, a shortage of key raw materials as well as overall significantly increasing prices,” Knobel commented.
“We recorded organic growth across all business units, kept our margin stable and achieved a very strong increase in earnings per preferred share. This is the achievement of our global Henkel team."
As part of its 'Purposeful Growth' agenda, which was first announced in March 2020, Henkel is also planning further portfolio optimisation over the coming months.
Over the course of 2021, it divested itself of businesses with a total annual sales volume of around €500 million, including its divestments of the brands Right Guard and Dry Idea.
It also made a significant acquisition in Laundry & Home Care with the acquisition of Swania, while since year-end, it has also added the Shiseido Hair Professional business in Asia-Pacific to its portfolio.
Strategic Agenda
“We are consistently driving the implementation of our strategic agenda and have made very good progress in many key areas," Knobel said. "In some areas, however, we see the need for further action. Therefore, we are now taking our agenda for Purposeful Growth to the next level."
On the creation of Henkel Consumer Brands, he said, "This provides a broader basis to optimise our portfolio even more consistently and bring it to a higher growth and margin profile. That is also reflected in our mid- to long-term financial ambition.”
Henkel announced a share buyback programme of up to €1 billion at the end of January 2022, which commenced in February.
Looking ahead to the coming year, the group said that the outlook for the 2022 financial year remains 'unchanged' since January, with the likelihood of 'high market uncertainty and volatility and the impact of further substantial increases in raw material and logistics costs'.
It expects to post organic sales growth in the range of 2% to 4%, and an EBIT margin between 11.5% and 13.5%.
© 2022 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest A-Brands news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
